An online social network is a group of people who share certain information over a computer network. A social network provider hosts a platform that allows user to create their own social networks. Examples of social network providers include Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn.
Some unscrupulous individuals seek to obtain user information from social network providers by creating accounts and requesting user profiles. If an unscrupulous user can convince other members of the social network provider to connect with him/her, then that user gains access to the user profiles (containing potentially intimate information) of the other members. Also, the unscrupulous user can spam the other members by sending individual messages to the other members or uploading content that might become part of the other members' content feeds.
Efforts are needed to identify users who violate the terms and conditions of online services and to restrict such users' access to those services.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.